Summa III q.30 a.4: The Order of the Annunciation and Wonder as the Beginning of Philosophy; q.31 a.1: Christ's Flesh Taken from Adam

Orientation #

He opens by saying “up to the fourth article, right?” — continuing question 30 of the Third Part on the Annunciation, then passing into the proemium of q. 31 and its first article. The previous class treated q. 30, a. 3 on why the Annunciation came by bodily vision.

The class, in order #

1. The three objections to the order of the Annunciation (“whether the Annunciation was perfected in a suitable order”) #

He reads the objections that the announcement was not made in a fitting order:

1. The Mother of God’s dignity depends on the offspring conceived; a cause should be made known before its effect; so the angel should have announced the conception first and only then saluted her dignity. (His aside: “she hasn’t agreed yet — that might be a problem.”)
2. Proof should either be omitted where there is no doubt or come first where there can be doubt; but the angel announced first what the Virgin would doubt (“How shall this come about?”), and only afterwards joined the proof — from Elizabeth, then from God’s power.
3. The greater cannot be sufficiently proved from the lesser; it was greater for a virgin to bring forth than for an old woman; so Elizabeth’s conception was no sufficient proof.

Sed contra: Romans 13:1, quae a Deo sunt ordinata sunt — “things which are from God are ordered” — a text he notes Thomas loves to quote, together with sapientis est ordinare; the angel was sent by God (Luke 1:26), therefore the announcement was done ordinatissime.

2. The angel’s three intentions (“the angel intended three things about the Virgin”) #

1. To make her mind attentive to so great a thing — done by a new and unaccustomed salutation. Origen on Luke: had she known a similar speech made to another, she would never have feared such a greeting as a stranger. Within the salutation: her fitness for conceiving (gratia plena), the conception itself (“the Lord is with you”), and the honour following (“blessed are you among women”).
2. To instruct her about the mystery of the Incarnation — announcing conception and birth (“Behold, you shall conceive”), the dignity of the offspring (“he will be great”), and the mode of conception (“the Holy Spirit shall come upon you”).
3. To induce her soul to consent — by the example of Elizabeth and by an argument from divine omnipotence.

3. Reply to the first: wonder makes the soul attentive (“to the humble soul nothing is more marvelous”) #

To a humble soul nothing is more marvellous than hearing its own excellence; and admiratio maxime attentionem animi facit. So the angel begins from praise — not merely because she is praiseworthy, but because in a humble soul praise rouses wonder, and wonder makes her attentive to a message of such importance for her and for the whole human race.

He notes the philosophical interest: Aristotle in the proemium to Wisdom shows wonder is the beginning of philosophy. Aside: a Dominican teacher of his used to say “teaching without wonder is nothing,” even in logic, and had a course built on a text of the Sentences where Thomas puts logic with natural philosophy rather than with grammar — the surprise itself meant to rouse wonder.

4. Plato’s Iris (“there is no other beginning of philosophy than wonder”) #

In the Theaetetus, Theodorus presents Theaetetus to Socrates as “something of a philosopher”; when the boy is full of wonder, Socrates says Theodorus guessed rightly about his nature, for there is no other beginning of philosophy than wonder — and “it was not a bad genealogy, the one who said Iris was the offspring of Thaumas.”

• He puts the question to the class: why is Iris both messenger of the gods and the rainbow personified? A student: “Is it bridging heaven and earth?” — yes: the rainbow unites heaven and earth, the messenger unites God and man.
• Hence the genealogy is good: wonder unites man and God, because wonder makes one seek the cause, and the cause of the cause, and does not stop until the first cause, which is God — at least on the side of his reason.
• His stress: if you read that line and do not wonder what it means, “then you’re not a philosopher.”
• Student exchange: the iris of the eye is likely named from the myth (the coloured part — left uncertain).
• Shakespeare: in The Tempest, Iris appears in Prospero’s vision — “Hail, many-coloured messenger,” holding together rainbow and messenger; and the young lady is named Miranda, “the word for wonder.” “Both a little bit of a poet, these two guys.”

5. What kind of thing rouses wonder (“contrary to what you’d expect”) #

Aristotle’s example in the proemium is the incommensurability of the diagonal and the side; Aristotle does not there explain its significance, but Thomas elsewhere shows the point: we wonder not simply at what whose cause is unknown, but at what is contrary to what we would expect, and then ask the cause.

• The glass dropped falls: no wonder, though we do not really know why it falls — Einstein admired Newton for knowing he did not know. If the glass went up, we would wonder.
• Euclid II.5 (his favourite example): you can enclose a greater area with a smaller perimeter — your longer fence encloses less land than my shorter one, “you spent more money to enclose less land.”
• Transposed to numbers: two and ten sum to twelve, four and five to nine; yet 4×5 = 20 (and 5×5 = 25) beats 2×10 = 20 — a greater sum can have a lesser product. To the untrained this rouses wonder.
• Einstein’s autobiographical sketch: as a child his father gave him a magnet, and that one body could move another without contact struck him with wonder.
• Application back: for a humble person, praise is contrary to what she expects — so wonder is aroused in her as it is in the philosopher.

6. Reply to the second: Mary questioned, Zachary doubted (“she does not doubt what is going to be done”) #

Ambrose on Luke says expressly the Virgin did not doubt the angel’s words: Mary’s response is more temperate than the priest’s. She asks how it will come about (“since I know not man”); Zachary asks “whence shall I know this?” — and he who denies himself to know denies himself to believe. He who asks in what way does not doubt that it will be done. Zachary is punished by being unable to speak.

Augustine (Questions of the Old and New Testament) seems to say she doubted: to Mary hesitant about the conception the angel preaches its possibility. Thomas’ distinction: such a doubt is of reason (admirationis rather than incredulity, as he glosses it) — like the carol, “What manner of child is this?”, amazement rather than denial. So the angel induces a proof not to remove infidelity but to temper her wonder — lest it become stupefaction, which he calls an impediment to investigation. (Student joke about being stupefied by an exploded custard.)

7. Reply to the third: Elizabeth as a figurative example (“not a sufficient argument, but a figurative example”) #

Ambrose in the Hexameron: many sterile women conceived beforehand so that the virgin birth might be believed. Elizabeth’s conception is therefore not a sufficiens argumentum but a kind of figure; to confirm it an efficacious argument from divine omnipotence is joined.

Parallel he offers: changing water into wine prepares for the Eucharist — lesser, but more known, since in the water-into-wine the accidents do not remain, so you see the change, whereas in the Eucharist you do not. “He can turn water into wine — why can’t he turn wine into blood?” More generally, all other miracles are less than the Incarnation yet dispose us to it.

8. Digression: beginning is more general than cause (“the point has no beginning”) #

Why does Aristotle in Book V of the Metaphysics (“the fifth book of Wisdom”) treat beginning before cause? Because beginning is more general: every cause is a beginning, not every beginning a cause; both words are equivocal by reason, and the first meaning of beginning is beginning of the continuous.

• The surface is the beginning of the solid, and has a beginning — the line; the line has a beginning — the point; but the point has no beginning.
• This prepares the mind for a cause that has no cause, a mover unmoved, a maker unmade — “and this is much easier to see, isn’t it?”
• The childhood objection: “Who made me?” “God.” “Then who made God?” — no one made God. By induction from everything we meet, we suppose everything has a maker; but the limited cube, bounded by squares, by lines, by the point which is not itself limited, already shows a limit with no limit. Not a Socratic argument, he says, but a leading from what is more known to us.

9. Proemium to q. 31 (“we are now to consider the conception of the Savior”) #

Three headings for the questions to follow: the matter from which his body was conceived; the author of the conception; the mode and order of the conception. Eight articles announced for this question: flesh taken from Adam; taken from David; the genealogy in the Gospels; born of a woman; formed of the purest blood of the Virgin; Christ’s flesh in the ancient fathers according to some sign(?); whether that flesh in the fathers was subject to sin; whether it was tithed in the loins of Abraham. (He remarks it is interesting only Adam and David are asked, and that Adam, David and Abraham get special mention. Note: his reading of the list stumbles over the numbering — “and fourth, or six rather” — and the sixth item is left uncertain in his own reading.) Aside: “niggard truth is,” Shakespeare says in the sonnets.

10. Article 1: was Christ’s flesh taken from Adam? (“that he might purge it from corruption”) #

Objections:

1. 1 Corinthians 15: the first man from earth, earthly; the second man from heaven, heavenly. The first man is Adam, the second Christ; so Christ has an origin distinct from Adam’s.
2. Christ’s conception ought to be most miraculous; it is more a miracle to form man’s body from the slime of the earth than from human matter drawn from Adam.
3. Sin entered the world through one man (Romans 5); if Christ’s body was taken from Adam it was in Adam when he sinned, and would have contracted original sin — unbefitting Christ’s purity.

Sed contra: Hebrews 2 — he nowhere took hold of the angels, but of the seed of Abraham; and Abraham’s seed was taken from Adam’s.

Body: Christ took human nature that he might purge it of corruption; but human nature needs purgation only so far as it is infected by a vitiated origin from Adam’s sin; therefore it was fitting he take flesh from matter derived from Adam, to cure that very nature by assuming it.

Replies:

1. Christ is called “of heaven” not as to the matter of his body but as to the power that formed it, or as to his divinity; as to matter his body was earthly, like Adam’s. (He notes in passing the interest of Christ’s being called “the second man.”)
2. The mystery of the Incarnation is miraculous not as ordered to confirming faith but as itself the chief article of faith; so what is required is not what is more a miracle — as in miracles worked to confirm faith — but what is more suitable to divine wisdom and to human salvation. Or: the miracle lies less in the matter than in the mode of conception and birth, since a virgin conceived and bore God (as Isaiah foretold).
3. Christ’s body was in Adam according to the substance of the body, since its material was derived from Adam, but not according to seed, since it was not conceived of male seed; therefore he did not contract original sin as those derived from Adam by that way do.

Closing exchange, on where the Virgin herself stands in this: “I thought he might have a beginning of a solution there in that question. No, I think he’s stuck.” — “Stuck in the slime of the earth.”

His words #

• Quae a Deo sunt ordinata sunt — “things which are from God are ordered” (Romans 13:1).
• Sapientis est ordinare — it belongs to the wise man to order.
• Ordinatissime — “most orderly,” his rendering of Thomas’s answer to the objections.
• Admiratio maxime attentionem animi facit — wonder above all makes the soul attentive.
• Gratia plena — “full of grace,” the salutation naming her fitness for conceiving.
• “Proemium to Wisdom” [ed.: the proemium of Aristotle’s Metaphysics]; “the fifth book of Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V].
• Thaumas — “where you get the word for wonder,” father of Iris in Plato’s genealogy.
• Stupefaction — excessive wonder, “an impediment to investigation.”
• Sufficiens argumentum — a sufficient argument, as opposed to a “figurative example.”
• “By antonomasia” — why Paul is simply called “the apostle.”
• “Equivocal by reason” — of the words beginning and cause [ed.: analogous].

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 30, a. 4 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 31, proemium and a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Romans 13:1; Luke 1:26; 1 Corinthians 15; Romans 5; Hebrews 2 — as quoted within those articles
• Origen on Luke; Ambrose on Luke; Ambrose, Hexameron; Augustine, Questions of the Old and New Testament — as cited by Thomas

Mentioned

• Plato, Theaetetus (Theodorus, Theaetetus, Iris and Thaumas)
• Aristotle, proemium to the Metaphysics (wonder; the incommensurable diagonal) and Metaphysics V (beginning before cause)
• Euclid, Book II, theorem 5
• Shakespeare, The Tempest (“Hail, many-coloured messenger”; Miranda); the Sonnets (“niggard truth”)
• Thomas, a text in the Sentences placing logic with natural philosophy rather than grammar
• Einstein’s autobiographical sketch (the magnet; his praise of Newton)
• The first epistle of John, read constantly at Mass (opening aside)

His questions #

• Was the Annunciation completed in a fitting order? Yes — ordinatissime: the angel first made her attentive, then instructed her, then induced her consent.
• Why does the angel begin with praise rather than with the announcement? Because to a humble soul nothing is more marvellous than hearing its own excellence, and wonder most of all makes the soul attentive.
• Why is Iris both the messenger of the gods and the rainbow personified? Because both unite heaven and earth — as wonder unites man and God by driving him to the first cause.
• What makes us wonder at a thing? Not merely that its cause is unknown, but that it is contrary to what we would expect.
• Did the Virgin doubt the angel’s words? No — with Ambrose, she asked how, not whether; Augustine’s “hesitation” is wonder, not incredulity, and the proof was given to temper wonder lest it become stupefaction.
• Was Elizabeth’s conception a sufficient proof of the virginal conception? No — a figurative example only, needing the efficacious argument from divine omnipotence.
• Why does Aristotle put “beginning” before “cause”? Because beginning is more general: every cause is a beginning, but not every beginning a cause.
• Was Christ’s flesh taken from Adam? Yes — he assumed the very nature infected from Adam in order to cure it, though not by way of seed, and so without original sin.
• What of the Virgin’s own case in this? Left open — “I think he’s stuck.”